Without considering her own safety, she threw open the door and started toward the overlook at a dead run. She wanted to call out to Zack, to warn him that he’d walked into an ambush, but she feared the sniper would fire prematurely. All she could do was run as fast as she could and hope she got there in time.
Her boots pounded against icy asphalt as she rounded the curve in the road. She spotted Zack standing at the rail, looking out over a magnificent snow-covered valley below. Though he stood ready, as if anticipating trouble, his back was to the rise. There was no way he could see the sniper.
Torn between warning him and alerting the sniper that he’d been seen, Emily stood motionless for the span of two heartbeats. Then she screamed, “Gun! Zack! Behind you!”
He spun. Myriad emotions scrolled across his face. Pleasure at seeing her. Fear for her safety. The realization that he’d made a fatal mistake.
The gunshot split the air like a crack of thunder. As if in slow motion, Zack jolted. For a moment he looked stunned. Then his hands clutched his abdomen. Emily saw blood coming between his fingers. And then he crumpled to the ground.
“No!” Forgetting her own safety, she streaked toward him.
As she covered the snowy ground, she saw the gunman out of the corner of her eye. The black flash of the barrel as he lined up for another shot. He was on a rise less than thirty feet away from where Zack had fallen. The logical side of her brain told her she was next. But it was her heart, not logic, that sent her barreling toward Zack.
Dear God, he couldn’t be dead.
She was so intent on reaching him that she didn’t hear the second shot.
Chapter Thirteen
Zack had gotten kicked by a horse when he was twelve years old. One moment he’d been standing there watching Katie Murdoch throw on the saddle and tighten the cinch. The next he’d had a steel shoe planted in the general vicinity of his solar plexus with a thousand pounds of thrust behind it.
Getting shot wasn’t much different, he thought as he lay on the ground and tried to get oxygen into his lungs. He could feel shock stealing his thoughts. Then his training kicked in. He rolled once and staggered to his feet. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the sniper fired again. He had to find cover.
Then he saw Emily running toward him and his only thought was that the damn crazy woman was going to get herself shot.
Just like Alisa.
“Emily, no!” Clutching his side where the bullet had struck him, Zack leaped into a run toward her. “Go back to the Jeep!”
She stopped and stood there, hesitating. He imagined her lovely face in the crosshairs of a sniper scope and he panicked. “Go back!”
She turned as if in slow motion. Zack poured on the speed and followed. Somewhere in the distance a bullet ricocheted off rock. Running at full speed, Zack placed himself between Emily and the sniper. “Get in the Jeep!” he shouted.
He was just ten feet away from her when they reached the Jeep. She ran to the passenger side, flung open the door and dived onto the seat. Zack yanked open the driver’s-side door, twisted the key. The Jeep shot forward before he’d even closed his door, its wheels slinging snow and slush and gravel high into the air.
For several seconds the only sound came from the roar of the engine and the ragged hiss of their labored breathing. Jamming the gears with a tad too much force, Zack pushed the vehicle to a dangerous speed. He didn’t know if it was the pain in his abdomen or the remnants of fear, but he was suddenly furious with Emily.
“What the bloody hell do you think you were doing?” he demanded.
“I saw the sniper,” she said between breaths. “Before the gunshot. I was trying to warn you.”
“You just about got yourself killed, damn it!”
“Zack, calm down.”
“Like hell!”
“Zack, please…you’ve been shot.”
“You think I don’t know that?” He rapped his hand hard against the steering wheel. “Damn it, Emily. You scared the hell out of me!”
“Look, there was no way I could sit there and do nothing while that sniper picked you off.”
He looked away from the road to glare at her, felt another wave of terror envelop him. He would never be able to live with himself if anything happened to her. Why in the name of God had he dragged her into this? What was he supposed to do now?
“Was that the mole?” she asked after a moment.
“I didn’t get a good look at him.” But he knew he’d just had a close encounter with the man who’d betrayed him. There was only a handful of people who’d known he would be there. His contact at MIDNIGHT. Avery Shaw. An administrative clerk by the name of Watson. He wondered which one of them wanted him dead and why. Did it have something to do with Lockdown, Inc.?
“He almost killed you, Zack. What are we going to do?”
“We don’t have a whole lot of options,” he said, hating it because for the first time in his life he was flat out of ideas.
“Maybe we could go back to the bed-and-breakfast,” she suggested.
“They’ve seen my face.”
“They only saw you with the disguise.”